ESA is About to Release its Third Giant Data Release From Gaia universetoday storybywill
observed during its mission, most of which consists of newly-released spectroscopy that revealed the chemical composition, temperature, color, mass, and age of these stars. The release also included radial velocity measurements for 33 million stars, five times more than DR2. Also new in this dataset is information on thousands of Solar System objects , millions of galaxies and quasars outside the Milky Way, and the largest catalog yet of binary stars in the Milky Way.
A series of 50 papers are also pending, nine of which are specifically dedicated to demonstrating the great potential of this latest Gaia data release. Astronomers expect that these new measurements will allow them to reconstruct the Milky Way’s 13.61 billion year history and its future evolution. They also anticipate that the data will improve our understanding of the life cycle of stars and the Solar System’s place in the Universe.